KpT

HEY

RANDOMLY I REALLY WANT TO SEE HOW MY GERMAN RAMS BEHAVE IF I GIVE THEM WATERS WITH PH4

WEIRDLY I AM NOT CONVINCED THIS IS POSSIBLE :P

ACCORDING TO MOST, REDUCING pH IS:

ANNOYING
POINTLESS
ETC
ETC

but im just so curious!!

Surely if theres only my pair of rams in there i can dedicate this experiment to them and not want to harmt hem in anyway.

The onyl reason is becasue i have heard many times that rams comes from those ranges and it would be a shame not to replicate them

CHEERS

SAM

Lucy

Let us know how it goes, but please don't yell.

PetSmart

Reducing pH is kind of annoying...
If you're able to get your pH down to 4 and keep it stable, please share what you've done...that would be quite the feat.

Pandora

Yes, I'd love to hear how you manage too! I've been struggling with maintaining a low, stable pH for my wild bettas (they're notoriously sensitive to illness at high pH), so anything that works would be a help.

Lucy

This thread might help you:

Changing your pH

pepetj

I am curious about why you aim at pH of 4. I just don't see how to attain such low levels without total removal of the needed buffering capabilities of dissolved carbonates (KH). Any tank with KH near zero would be at imminent risk of pH crash, as far as I know.

Lowering pH can be done safely, it requires a lot of effort and patience if we do it with fish in the tank.

I have lowered my Angelfish tank pH from 7.8 to 7.1 by filtering through small amounts of peat fiber, mixing RO processed drinking water as needed during partial water changes, adding mineral traces, and even using peat extract. I keep sodium bicarbonte (baking soda) at hand, just in case it's needed.

It took me around 6 to 8 weeks. All you need to do is confirm you are always working with reliable KH values, be ready to slow or even disrupt the process if you obtain readings of 2 or 2.5 DKH to be on the safe side.

Steady CO2 injection will also do the trick if your water is not too hard. At this point, I am beginning the injection of CO2 in that tank, aiming at pH 6.8.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

KpT

OKAY, HERES AN UPDATE:



PH=6 (i was told if my PH was neutral and i injected C02 it would go down 1 and no more)
GH=2-4
KH (still unknown as strips are terrible and the COLUMBUS test kit i found seems faulty
BPM=14 per min, 1 roughly per 4-5 secs, may slow soon due to it being DIY
Nitrites=0
nitrate-0.25
amomnia=0
amomnium=.0.04



RAMS BEHAVIOUR= Fine, same as normal, the male casually chases the female for a bit , otherwise they swim together and show off their colours.
(Btw..will their colours stand out more if i put more greenery in the tank cuz they seem to when next to the amazon sword)

NOTE: This has been done to see if my source @
http://fish.mongabay.com/biotope_amazon_blackwater.htm
was correct or not as regards to rams liking 4.5..Everythign is being done slwoly and carefully with full consideration, do not mistake my madness for carelessness please.


AMAZON SWORD: Looks fairly healthy, only got it on sunday.. Any tips as to keeping this baby growing nicely would be greatly appreciated.
Stuff done so far for it:
Added in 6 iron pegs to the gravel of the pot
Put a bed of laterite in the bottom of the pot
Going to buy some ferts with magnesium
Lighting is fairly standard
Co2 injection as above
Will probabaly move plant out of pot soon to an embankment at the back of tank amde of gravel.



KH? Personally becasue of the tanks i have tried to make i hate KH and would rather change water daily to create natural habitat than have buffer in the water but i am forced to have some thna im thinking how low can i have it to make moving PH easy but still having it high enough to stop a PH crash.



PH 4: If i am to aim for 4.5, how would i get the PH to go below 6 from here



THIS LITTLE EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN TO LET OTHER BIOTOPERS SEE THAT IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE EXACT NOT NEARLY.



THANKS



SAM

Lucy

I guess my question would be, why would you want to purposely expose a fish to a PH that's not recommended for them?

KpT

UPDATE 2

OKay so the recommended PH 4.5-6.5 from
http://fish.mongabay.com/biotope_amazon_blackwater.htm
Was a bad idea to go to the lower end.

So ill chnage subject a little as i just wanted to know, now that all my parameters are fine, has anyone got any tips on how i can use:

8 peices of bogwood
4 stones
1 cave
7 seperate amazon fake plants
1 real amazon sword
some moss balls
some java moss

To aquascape my tank in the best way

My only idea at the moment is to make the ridge at the back of the tank by mixing some gravel and laterite in with the sand to make the substrate deeper at the back of the tank for the amazon to grow in.
So ill be taking the amazon out of the pot probably.

Thanks

Sam

PS: I have forgotten how to treat bogwood before placing it in the tank, ive purchased one extra piece today with helping to push up the ridge at the back of the tank and im not sure.

I soaked the peices last time but if i want the affects of the bogwood then shud i just rinse the peice to get rid of dust??

KpT

Hey everyone

Right

So i didnt have anything to test for KH
The strips were rubbish
And my COLUMBUS drop tester was falso..

OR SO I THOUGHT

I just gave it one last go and after adding two drops the water was basically really pale yellow.

After adding one drop its supposed to go blue, then after another so many drops it goes yellow which tells you how high the KH is.

So i put some of my mineral powder in it to raise the KH

And when i put the drops in this time ther water turned blue.

So ive come to the conclusion that my KH is 0

capekate

Hello KpT
As you have already posted this exact same question on another forum ( FishForums.net) and used the same posts there as you are doing here, I have to ask why would you do such a thing to your fish?
As others told you there, that you are doing harm to your rams by subjecting them to such an extreme low PH level, you would be actually causing burns and injury to your rams, which I think is totally cruel.
There is no logical reason that I can think of to put your fish through this misery. You may have found one site that gave you bad information on what levels of PH your Rams can live in, and saying they can live in a PH level of 4 is bad information.
" acid rain on the average has a PH of about 5, so a PH level of 4 is not something most fish would ever encounter in the wild"
"PH4 is about 180 times more acidic than a PH of 7"
Its like dipping your rams in hydrochloric acid....
You had some great advice given to you at that forum, I really wish that you would take that advice given. It is very disturbing to me, as a fish lover that someone would want to use their Rams for an experiment that they have been advised against by most people telling him that it would be truly harmful to their fish.
Did you think you would get different advice on this here?
Im sorry if I sound blunt on this, but as I said, it is a terrible thing to do and then to come to this forum and try to run it by us here thinking you were going to get approval on such a thing really bothers me.

Lucy

It's also posted on fish geeks

KpT

Hey man

I only post on different forums to get various views about ALL my posts, i havent done it just for this one so one person says youll kill youre fish and another says yer thats fine burn em. GOD, what do you think i am, a monster.

Seriously youve got the completley wrong end of the stick.
The PH is at 6 atm and i dont intend to go lower until someone says its okay, and soon as no one has, i wont, simple

One site said 4.5 is the least they ever encounter but i will only go to 5.5 now, i just want the rams to have the nicest envirement and thats the truth.

When i said experiment i meant ya no, just testing whether they liked it lower or not, cuz personally i think its CRUEL to subject them to PH 7 and above like they do in shops when thats not what it is in the wild so its an argument i wont bother with cuz i dont like them.

Cheers

Sam

capekate

And cut and pasted in to TropicalFIshForumUKcom as well. That is three places now all the same and pretty much all the same responses saying that it was not a good idea. I am sure there are more sites that I didnt see too.
I just do not understand it...

Pandora

I was under the impression the OP was trying to replicate their biotope? I know nothing about the usual conditions for rams in the wild, but several wild species of betta are found in habitats where the water is extremely acidic, the pH ranges from 4.0 to 6.0 (stated in reliable sources such as the IBC species maintenance program) and have a very hard time adapting to higher pH's. Yes, most fish species can easily acclimate and thrive under conditions different to what they would encounter in the wild (especially those that have been bred in captivity for generations), but they are still physiologically adapted to perform at their best at a certain range. I thought that was the intent in this case? To try to provide optimal conditions for the species? Though obviously it's always a good thing to check multiple sources when trying to determine that for any species, since there seems to be a concensus that 4 is too low for the rams...

Ram_Kelly

I keep rams and my pH is around 6. I use driftwood and peat to naturally lower the pH, not chemicals. I have a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and from that point of mind I think exposing fish to a pH of 4 isn't such a great idea. Someone before said it would be like dipping them in HCl (Hydrochloric Acid), which isn't exactly true because HCl has a pH less than 1, but they had the right idea: anthing less that pH=7 is acidic. Tomatoes have a pH around 4 and while they don't exactly burn you they do have that "kick". Why don't you just take the advice everyone has given you and suspend this "experiment"?

capekate

A PH of 4 is ten times more acidic than a PH of 5 and 100 times more acidic than a PH of 6. So no, its not the same as hydrochloric acid, but to the fish that would be affected it sure would feel that way. I was trying to express how really bad it is for the fish...

German Blue Rams do well no lower than 6 at the most.

angelfish220

I will put my word against this as well. As long as your pH isn't like 9 or anything, I think that your natural pH would be fine, and purposely stressing your fish isn't a good thing.